Thinking about how best to step up your game in 2022? Look no further! Below are five resolutions for your consideration; none of them easy, but each guaranteed to make you be a more effective leader. Well, not exactly guaranteed. . .
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Good managers are skilled at removing obstacles so that their team members can work efficiently. Great managers see these obstacles as really tools to guide change and to develop extraordinary teams. Here’s how they do it …
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Our sense of what it means to be a high performing nonprofit Board focus on how well the Board performs—not what it provides. But active and engaged do not always equate to being useful.
Is your Board providing as much value as it can to your organization? Let’s find out. . .
We expect nonprofit Boards to render wise decisions, guide strategy and raise money. When they fail to so so, we assume the problem is that they need more—Members, training, engagement. The real problem is unrealistic expectations—myths—about what Boards should be doing. What are these myths and why are so destructive?
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Terminating a team member may be necessary for future organizational success or to resolve an ongoing problem—but that’s not likely to be the initial perspective of the remaining team members. But your options for guiding them through this moment are very limited. Here’s some ways to make the best of a bad situation.
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The SMART rubric is well tailored for goals that are intended to be accomplished. But it doesn't fit so well with other essential types of goals. Here's how to know if SMART is the best way to think about your goals.
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“Resolve problems” is the indispensable job responsibility of every manager. But for some problems, the effort to find a permanent resolution is likely to cause more harm than good. These are Mowing the Lawn problems and learning how to address these, can spare everyone—especially you—a lot of unnecessary suffering.
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Looking ahead at 2021, income uncertainty is off the charts. The pandemic, recession, stock market volatility, government shortfalls, election and evolving foundation and donor priorities are combining to create as unpredictable a funding environment as we’ve ever seen. With budget planning season fast approaching, many nonprofits have an extraordinary challenge on their hands. Here's what you can do:
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As the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly remakes our world, nonprofits are grappling with the financial turmoil. Unfortunately, many Boards of Directors are poorly positioned to collaborate with staff leadership in guiding their organizations forward. Often, the only time Boards are accustomed to focusing on the future is when they approve a budget. The rest of the year, they look backwards, receiving financial reports for past periods and comparing them to an ever more dated budget. This reinforce a deep divide between what the Board is paying attention to and what is important. Here’s how you can narrow the gap.
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Most nonprofits did not decide for themselves to shut down, but each will have to choose for itself when and how best to reopen. While this may feel like an enormous decision, it doesn’t have to. The question of whether to reopen can be reduced to a set of much smaller choices, with proportionately smaller risks and uncertainties. Here’s how…
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Your nonprofit is so much more than “just” a business, but it is still a business, with income to collect and bills to pay. Unfortunately, many nonprofits will be at extreme financial risk over the next few months, and most are not prepared to meet the challenge. Here's what you need to do…
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Your annual plan probably didn’t factor in the likelihood of a global pandemic, did it? And yet, here we are. Here’s how you can successfully lead your organization through these next few months…
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The allure of win-win solutions is obvious—decisions that satisfy everyone are better. Until recently, I never questioned the benefits of win-win thinking. I knew it wasn’t always achievable, but I didn’t doubt its desirability. Anand Giridharadas's brilliant book, Winner Takes All, has recently led me to reconsider.
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When staff complain about a lack of transparency, nonprofit leaders commonly respond by promising more. This rarely works because the perceived lack of transparency is usually obscuring a more significant problem—a lack of trust. The understandable inclination to increase transparency without confronting the underlying challenge around trust is the essence of the transparency trap.
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What explains our chronic failure to effectively onboard nonprofit leaders? Surveys persistently show high levels of ED dissatisfaction with their onboarding processes.* The conventional answer is that Boards of Directors are to blame for failing in their responsibility for onboarding new leaders. This is both true and entirely beside the point.
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Congratulations! You’ve just hired your next staff leader. Now it’s time to think about the onboarding. The first few months of the new leader’s tenure will be the cornerstone of both the successes and challenges of the years ahead. Thoughtful decisions now about what approach to onboarding makes the most sense will have implications far down the road.
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I’ve been reading Ron Friedman’s The Best Place to Work. The book applies insights from a variety of fields—psychology, neuroscience, economics, anthropology, etc.—to the work place. The evidence Friedman presents affirms many things that I thought must be true (natural light is a good thing!), but it’s also caused me to reconsider some of my assumptions. I wish I’d read this book years ago.
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Pity the perfectionist manager! How can she delegate to staff knowing that they won’t do nearly as good a job as she could? She expects nothing more of her team than she does of herself and yet, time and again, they disappoint. Not surprisingly, she finds managing to be frustrating and stressful. Sometimes she acts out. Pity her team as well! They aren’t oblivious. They know they’re being micromanaged and underappreciated. Sometimes they act out.
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“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” There are a host of nuanced explanations for what that actually means, but the basic point is pretty straightforward—if you want to have an impact (through your strategies), you need to pay attention to your culture.
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Having recently joined an organization as COO, I also took on the responsibilities of interim Development Director. One day, a draft solicitation was sent to me for approval. I found one sentence confusing and edited it accordingly. When asked if I wanted to see it again before it went out, I replied that as long as the edit was made, it was good to go.
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